


Shadows Bright

by Jenwryn



Category: Death Note
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-03-08
Updated: 2009-03-08
Packaged: 2017-10-02 12:49:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenwryn/pseuds/Jenwryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Time passes, things change, and the world turns on an invisible axis.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shadows Bright

**Author's Note:**

> This is a bit of a different style for me, I think, (which is another way of saying, grammar just left the building alongside Elvis), but I had a lot of fun trying my hand at it. Although, well, apparently nobody writes L/Sayu, gasp. Or barely anyone. So there you go!! Anyway, it's AU, clearly; the best kind of AU, which is to say, utterly inexplicable, and you just get to accept what's going on, heh. Apparently the whole business with Kira has been dealt with, and Light is free, and is now working with L. As is Sayu. Indeedy. None of which is really all that important, actually, considering where this one-shot starts and where it ends. Also, Sayu Yagami is a grown woman in this story; I get the feeling she's actually in her late twenties here.

> And moving through a mirror clear  
> That hangs before her all the year,  
> Shadows of the world appear.
> 
> ~ Tennyson, _The Lady of Shalott._
> 
> __

The heavy door closes with a tetchy bang, and Sayu Yagami settles back against the desk, the wood of it lined sharply at her lower back. She raises her eyebrows, and opens her mouth. “Ah,” she says, almost softly, almost playfully; perhaps a whisper of resignation hangs there too. She lifts her teacup in a confiding way, and gazes at the man before her, from atop its gold-dipped rim; she wishes the blue-veined china didn't feel so expensive between her fingers. “I guess that that's still a touchy subject, then,” she says, a simple fact expressed in small, clear words, and she thinks it would be nice if her voice could sound more amused.

Her companion studies his own tea, uninterested in the cup containing it, but considering whether the sugar ratio is high enough for his preferences. His slender fingers, man's knuckles to punctuate the flesh's thinness, add another cube of sugar. The white of it glints in the soft gleam of the evening light, the crystals packed together so tightly as to seem one united entity. His eyes rise to watch her even as his fingers move; he sips the milky, altered brew, approves of its sucrose saturation, and then continues to study her from above it, even after his mouthful is completely swallowed. When he has seen his full, of whatever it is that he sees when he gazes upon her, he places his teacup on the desk, giving it a home upon a book whose spine declares itself as containing part one of the _Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch._ He moves with almost exaggerated care, nodding to himself as he goes. His fingers dance over the china and cutlery, selecting a small, silver cake fork from a plain white plate; he takes the fork, and spears half of a stewed cherry onto the end of it, scooping the fruit up from a piece of golden sponge cake.

He answers, “Hmm. It would seem that the liberty of having his own cases to take hasn't improved his stress levels any.”

Sayu finds herself smiling. “Well, you know, he is your partner now. Knowing Light, he probably thinks I'm unfairly distracting you.”

L Lawliet smiles as well, a small and quiet smile, a smile meant only for the young woman before him. He walks around the desk towards her. She holds her teacup like a shield between the two of them, and he likes the way it looks in her hands, balanced there, curled up to sleep in her warm fingers like a china cat, nestled between the soft swell of her breasts. “You _are _distracting me,” he concedes calmly. “But not in an unfair manner. And I don't mind at all.”

When he takes yet another step closer, her smile moves up a dress-size. She places her cup down as well, the blue-blooded whiteness of it clinking finely against its saucer, balanced upon the Czech-Romanian dictionary she had brought him from the library; part of the case research she had originally come to discuss with him and her brother. But now her brother has walked out, and the research can wait. She leans backwards, a lady-like sprawl, titillating with the class of a vintage pin-up girl, against the mahogany of his desk. He appraises the view with shadowed eyes, so dark; blinks slowly, pleased. He raises the tiny silver fork, and offers her the half-cherry. She accepts the fruit with her lips, holds it between them, and _looks _at him; every inch of her, her skin and her jeans and her hands, speaking out the words of an unspoken challenge. L's smile turns into a full, crooked smirk, and he leans in swiftly, almost dangerously, his fingers bent against the desk to either side of her hips, his mouth meeting hers, rough and warm and wanting. He kisses her. The half-cherry, soft and warm from having been cooked between the cake and the oven, falls further in half, collapsing in a damp outburst of dark purple juice. He licks it from her lips, his tongue agile and eager, and completely at home on the smooth curve of her face.

“I suppose, also,” he murmurs softly, tasting of cherry inside his own mouth, “that he still does not approve.”

Moments like these, Sayu can almost hear the smooth British sounds beneath L's Japanese; can almost read emotions in the shadows of his eyes, the like of which she would never have believed, when she had first met him, that he was capable of. They had argued, when they'd been introduced. Or she had argued. She had slapped his face with the back of her hand, skinny knuckles leaving white marks on whiter skin; white, to turn purple like plum jam. _How dare you accuse my brother of such things, you bastard, don't think I don't know who you are, I'm not stupid._ He had stood there, and had taken it, hunch-shouldered, his own hands buried deep in his pockets. He'd blinked at her, and had conceded her right to abuse. But time passes, it has been observed more than once. Years shift onwards. Things change. The world curves on its invisible axis, mapped out for us as schoolchildren but never quite comprehensible. Pulls things apart.

Draws things together.

She slides her hands around his neck, knotting knuckles and fingers alike against his skin, softly now. No accusations; those evaporate as well, beneath time, and touch, and the warm tea within her veins. Cherry gives way to sugar as they kiss again, deeper, her tongue submitting contentedly to his stronger need to suck, hold, condense, consume. She presses her lower body against him in answer, swinging her hips slightly and slowly, a silent dance which would be barely perceptible to an outside viewer, were there one in amongst the dusky silence of his office. But there aren't any observers, only the hushed weight of old books and older furniture, and the pale light that trickles in at the window, and dapples make-believe colour into his dark hair. Two halves, they make, the pair of them, their bodies warm and wrapped, like this. She doesn't even remember when it started. Perhaps that moment when she had hit him. Perhaps a little later, when she had used him as means to break free of her family's loving chains and make her own life, just as her brother had done. Or perhaps there had been no _moment_, no one point in time to be pinned down, like finger-food on a stick; perhaps there had just been a slow and steady realisation of things deeper than youthful freedom-seeking. Now she holds him close, either way, because she's found what it is that she wants.

His head leans down against her shoulder, like a child seeking the comfort which she seeks to offer. His hands are not childlike, though, as they walk the confines of her back, counting vertebrae, though their number and shape have long been memorised. Those hands slide downwards, considering the weave and thread of her blue-green sweater, reaching the line which marks the border between clothes and soft, soft skin. She trembles as they slide beneath, beyond, curl under; she can imagine the invisible fingerprints his hands leave upon her, marking her as his, as they slide upwards again, along the warm, bare length of her back.

“What is there not to approve of?” she asks. The question doesn't matter. Only his hands matter, but she moves her lips because she wants to; breathes in the warmth of his breath, as he gazes up at her when she speaks. His manners, his breeding, are not half so bad as people choose to believe. He likes to watch when she communicates, likes to read the emotions on her face; likes to watch her when she's working on a case, her lips pursed in thought. They call it staring; she knows better, that's the only difference. She would trace her thumb along his lips and make him shiver, but she enjoys the feel of his neck beneath her entwined hands too much to let go. “The world's three greatest detectives, all in one,” she catalogues, soft and dry and affectionate, like a museum curator; like a wife. “Brilliant. Protective. Extremely pleasant to gaze upon. Surely an older brother ought to applaud my good sense and fine taste.” The words are ironic, self-effacing, three shades away from mocking; she means them, though. L peers up at her, and reads the truth in her eyes. He tastes the affection in the sway of her jeans-clad hips against his thighs. She teases her words against his skin with her fingertips, presses in closer, shifts, with a sigh of soft wool and rough denim.

He sighs happily against her neck. He kisses her skin, tasting honey shower wash and slight salt, tasting woman; tasting Sayu. “Your father doesn't approve either,” he reminds her, though his mind is re-playing the memory of bathing her the night before, honey-scented bubbles pearly against her skin. “He doesn't want to see his only daughter with a detective, not even the world's greatest detective.” The self-depreciation in his voice tastes like tea, as he raises his face, and kisses her.

She pulls her hands upwards into his hair, feels the thickness of it, the darkness, the softness, which surprises her still. She speaks, she says, “I'm not a child, L. I'm a woman. And my father is more annoyed by the fact that I'm working as a detective, than he is that I'm sleeping with one. But he and my brother don't have to live with my choices. Only I do. And I'm happy.” Words drop to a whisper, hands tighten. Her mouth speaks again, softly, softly, hush: “You make me happy.”

Contentment, how can you define it? She can't. He can't. They have given up on trying to catch it between their fingers, they let it slip and slide instead, let it hum with the white-cotton skip of the curtains against the glass behind them. He smiles against her lips, darting his tongue out for more. It doesn't matter anyway. If they approve. If they don't. He never cared about anything but himself, and his little group of _few._ The rest, the ones who aren't his incredible children, the ones who aren't his mentor, the ones who aren't the woman before him with those eyes of hers, and that fierce intellect behind them; the woman with her touch that says she's just as single-minded as he is... he doesn't care about the rest of them. Her family will come to terms with it. It would be simpler, perhaps, if they accepted immediately. But since when has life been simple?

Sayu finds the shadows at his temples, seeks them out with her fingertips, and rubs them away. She laughs when he takes her by the hips and lifts her up, seats her on the desk. She's at home between the books and the research, amongst the cake and the too-fine teacups. He's at home when he steps between her knees, stands closer to her warmth. He says her name and presses his open mouth against her neck; he bites at her skin, and her thighs tighten against him, grasping him. The world outside the window is curling into a slough of dusk, light fading, night rising. Shadows cast longer and longer, candles of darkness creeping. But his mouth is wanting, and her hands are warm. She sighs, he sighs, she pulls him closer, and the world outside fades away. No approval. No judgement. Just here. Just now. Just the scent of cherries and honey and dark, strong tea, and they remember what needs to be remembered.

She speaks his name, gently now, and it sounds like forever.

 


End file.
